It’s 2025, and I’m thinking about the future. I’ve been playing the role of the “black critic of black progressive politics” for some time now—is it starting to get old? Do I need to find a new orientation for myself? With my retirement from teaching approaching fast, how should I best use all the time I’ll have at my disposal? John McWhorter is here with me for our first episode of the new year, and we’re talking about all of that and more.
I raise my wariness about my own critical position to John. He admits that our job can sometimes get monotonous, but someone needs to do it. And yet, things may change in a way that shakes up the race beat. Trump’s effect on the political alignments in the US has yet to be analyzed rigorously, but John senses a “seismic sociopolitical shift.” We can see part of that shift in the dispute on the right about H-1B visas, which allow employers to sponsor non-citizen employees for legal residency. Whether those visas (and the people using them) should stay or go is one of the first major policy disputes of the second Trump presidency, which hasn’t even really started yet. We return to Luigi Mangione, who continues to fascinate the public for all the wrong reasons. And finally, I accidentally help John formulate a topic for his next New York Times column.
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0:00 Intro
1:10 John feels Glenn’s pain
2:36 Glenn: “I’m tired of being the black guy who has to call bullshit on the race narrative”
9:21 The monotonous groove of the race discourse
12:35 John: “This is the most seismic sociopolitical shift of my lifetime”
19:17 Ground News ad
21:10 The H-1B conflict on the right
26:24 The hard truths of global competition
30:09 Luigi Mangione, folk hero?
36:09 ACTA ad
38:22 Glenn and John’s 2025 status
44:52 Living on the edge of a weekly deadline
46:45 Why did Al Jolson wear blackface?
Recorded January 5, 2025
Links and Readings
Charles Sheeler’s painting, “River Rouge Plant”
Coleman Hughes’s book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America
JD Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Matt Taibbi on coverage of Luigi Mangione’s personal style
Glenn’s forthcoming book, Self-Censorship
Richard Bernstein’s book, Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer
Trailer for Al Jolson’s film, Mammy
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